"Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach."- Aristotle

"The most valuable resource that all teachers have is each other.
Without collaboration our growth is limited to our own perspectives." -
Robert John Meehan

"If you ask me what I came into this world to do, I will tell you
without hesitation: I was born to be a teacher."- Robert John Meehan

Learn from those whose wisdom defines our profession.

“I've come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element
in the classroom. It's my daily mood that makes the weather. As a
teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child's life miserable
or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I
can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my
response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated
and a child humanized or de-humanized.” - Dr. Haim Ginott

"Be a reflective teacher. Honestly look at what you do from time to
time. Evaluate the purpose of your role as a teacher."- Robert John
Meehan

"It shouldn't matter how slowly some children learn as long as we are encouraging them not to stop."- Robert John Meehan

"Your life as a teacher begins the day you realize that you are always a learner."- Robert John Meehan

"Whoever first coined the phrase 'you're the wind beneath my wings' most assuredly was reflecting on the sublime influence of a very special teacher."- Frank Trujillo

"Learning becomes relevant when we connect it with reality." - Robert John Meehan

"In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less."- Lee Iacocca

"Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it."- Buddha

"Teachers who love teaching, teach children to love learning." - Robert John Meehan

"Education ... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading."- G. M. Trevelyan

"Failure is the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently." - Henry Ford

"Our teaching should always be artfully crafted. It should impart
something that is in itself sacred to the senses of our students."-
Robert John Meehan

"If kids come to us [educators/teachers] from strong, healthy functioning families, it makes our job easier. If they do not come to us from strong, healthy, functioning families, it makes our job more important." - Barbara Colorose

"Be diligent in trusting that what we do in the classroom could
possibly echo for a lifetime in the heart of a student."- Robert John
Meehan

"Every child has a different learning style and pace. Each child is
unique, not only capable of learning but also capable of succeeding."- Robert John Meehan

"It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated."- Alec Bourne
"Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity."- Aristotle

"The most valuable resource that all teachers have is each other.
Without collaboration our growth is limited to our own perspectives." -
Robert John Meehan

"Teaching is leaving a vestige of one self in the development of another. And surely the student is a bank where you can deposit your most precious treasures."- Eugene P. Bertin

"Better
teaching never comes from a political mandate...it comes from the heart
of a prepared and caring teacher."- Robert John Meehan

"Teach with a renewed appreciation of its consequences and you will never
cease to realize the infinite possibilities within your reach."- Robert John Meehan"Although most would only see our students as an ocean of small faces, as teachers we
see them as the waves that propel us."- Robert John Meehan

"The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but reveal to them their own."- Benjamin Disraeli

"Education is not the answer to the question. Education is the means to the answer to all questions."- William Allin

"If you have a passion for learning, it will become the drive for everything you do in the classroom."- Krissy Venosdale

"What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child."- George Bernard Shaw

"If a seed of a lettuce will not grow, we do not blame the lettuce.
Instead, the fault lies with us for not having nourished the seed
properly." - Buddhist proverb

"If your actions in the classroom inspire children to achieve more, question more, and dream more, you are indeed worthy of the title "Teacher." - Robert John Meehan

"Demanding that students test well in the absence of appropriate
resources is disheartening for teachers and disastrous for students."- Robert John Meehan"What we must decide is perhaps how we are valuable, rather than how valuable we are." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

"We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn."- Peter F. Drucker

"Those that make test scores and grades the heart of education hit their targets while entirely missing the point." - Joe Bower

"Education is that which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding."- Ambrose Bierce

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."- Albert Einstein

“It is what we are excited about that educates us.”- Mike Rose

"Teaching is more than imparting knowledge, it is inspiring change.
Learning is more than absorbing facts, it is acquiring understanding."- William Arthur Ward

"A really great teacher will make learning likely, not just possible."- Robert John Meehan

"Real joy comes not from ease or riches or from the praise of men, but from doing something worthwhile."- Sir Wilfred Grenfell

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Your career as a teacher is going to fill a large part of your life. The
only way to be a truly satisfied teacher is to do it with passion and vigor."- Robert John Meehan

"Your heart is slightly bigger than the average human heart, but that's because you're a teacher." - Aaron Bacall

Great teachers empathize with kids, respect them, and believe that each one has something special that can be built upon."- Ann Lieberman

"It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the politicians have to hold bake sales to support their campaigns."- Robert John Meehan

"As a teacher you have to be committed to learning for a lifetime first
before you can lead your students down that path."- Robert John Meehan

"Children learn more from what you are than what you teach."- W. E. B. DuBois

"Almost every student you meet may
be fighting a battle you know nothing about. Stop, think, then make
your response accordingly."- Robert John Meehan

"The most important function of education at any level is to develop the personality of the individual and the significance of his life to himself and to others. This is the basic architecture of a life; the rest is ornamentation and decoration of the structure." - Grayson Kirk

"The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else."-John W(illiam) Gardner

"What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others."- Pericles
"To teach a man how he may learn to grow independently, and for himself, is perhaps the greatest service that one man can do to another."- Benjamin Jowett

“Teaching is the greatest act of optimism”- Colleen Wilcox

"A good teacher must be able to empathize what it must be like to
struggle to learn something that may have come so easily to them."- Robert John Meehan

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Nothing that the political ed reformist mandate can match the results of
a dedicated teacher in a "supportive" school environment." - Robert John Meehan

"Repeated high stakes testing has only proven that five out of four students have trouble with fractions."- Robert John Meehan

"As teachers we spend little time focusing on what has been accomplished; we focus mainly on what remains to be done."- Robert John Meehan

"Standardized Testing tells us about learning as much as Reality TV tells us about reality."- Joe Bower

"Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The greatest sign of a success for a teacher, is to be able to say,
"The children are now working as if I did not exist."- Maria Montessori

"Sadly, children’s passion for learning often ends when they encounter a
world that seeks to educate them 4 conformity and obedience only."- Robert John Meehan

"Imagine if people were as passionate about education as they are about pop culture."- Robert John Meehan

"Any genuine teaching will result, if successful, in someone's knowing
how to bring about a better condition of things than existed earlier."-
John Dewey

"Pursue confidently your dreams of being a teacher. Teach each day as
you once imagined you would. Don't let today's obstacles keep you from
yesterday's dreams."- Robert John Meehan

"Rewards and punishments are the lowest form of education."- Chuang-Tzu

"Education reform does not necessarily assure progress, but progress implacably
requires change. As teachers, positive change has always been our goal."- Robert John Meehan

"We've worked too hard and too long to let anything stand in the way of our student's success." - Robert John Meehan

"A great teacher is someone who can learn from his students, who can learn with them, and learns for them."- Robert John Meehan

"Next in importance to Freedom and Justice is popular education, without which neither Freedom nor Justice can be permanently maintained." - James Abram Garfield

"Teachers believe they have a gift for giving; it drives them with the same irrepressible drive that drives others to create a work of art or a market or a building."- Angelo Bartlett Giamatti

"The real skills that must be developed in school must involve doing rather than simply knowing."- Robert John Meehan

"A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a
desire to learn is hammering on cold iron." - Horace Mann

"All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants."- John Gardner

"The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn." - Marcus Tullius Cicero

"Our children need strong figures in their lives; do not allow the
corporate media to provide these figures for you." - Robert John Meehan

"Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers." - Josef Albers

"As teachers we must adjust to the ever changing mandates but still hold
to the unchanging principles that every child can and will succeed."- Robert John Meehan

"The teachers who get "burned out" are not the ones who are constantly
learning, which can be exhilarating, but those who feel they must stay
in control and ahead of the students at all times."- Frank Smith

"As Teachers, we should be the
waves that drift around, lift and propel our students out to new places
beyond the security of each student's own presumed harbor."- Robert John
Meehan

"We should not lose sight of the fact the most important door a child
walks through for their education is the front door of their home."- Robert John Meehan

"The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another." - Marva Collins
"A gifted teacher is not only prepared to meet the needs of today's
child, but is also prepared to foresee the hopes and dreams in every child's future."- Robert John Meehan

"The most important outcome of education is to help students become independent of formal education." - Paul E. Gray

"You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother."- Albert Einstein

"Whenever you hear a politician carry on about what a mess the schools
are, be aware that you are looking at the culprit." - Molly Ivins

"An exemplary teacher will not just enlighten the student, but will also empower the student."- Robert John Meehan

"Learning is finding out what we already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, and teachers." - Richard Bach

"If
real learning is to take place, our classrooms must be dependent on the
collaboration of its learners, not solely on the knowledge of its
teachers." Robert John Meehan

"I don't think you have to teach people how to be human. I think you have to teach them how to stop being inhumane."- Eldridge Cleaver

"The most valuable resource that all teachers have is each other.
Without collaboration our growth is limited to our own perspectives."-
Robert John Meehan

"The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards." - Anatole France

"Effective teaching may be the hardest job there is."- William Glasser

"Due
to recent budget cuts, the 'light at the end of the tunnel' has been
turned off for far too many of our students currently needing the most
assistance."- Robert John Meehan

"Every
time I hear another hedge fund manager talk about school reform, I worry
even more about the direction education reform is taking."- Robert John
Meehan

"Don't struggle to be a better teacher than everybody else. Simply be a
better teacher than you ever thought you could be."- Robert John Meehan

"Be diligent in believing that what we do in the classroom could
possibly echo for a lifetime in the heart of a student."- Robert John
Meehan

"Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach."- Aristotle

"The whole being of any Teacher is within our own hearts. Although an education
prepares us to teach, it is the love of learning that sustains us."- Robert John Meehan

"If not us, who? If not now, when?"- John F Kennedy

“More important than the curriculum is the question of the methods of
teaching and the spirit in which the teaching is given.”- Bertrand
Russell

"One teacher with a desire to teach the least desired children is equal
to a force of 100 corporate ed reformers who have only a passing interest in them."- Robert John Meehan

"From your parents you learn love and laughter and how to put one foot before the other. But when books are opened you discover you have wings."- Helen Hayes

"Those who trust us educate us."- George Eliot

"As
teachers we must adjust to the ever changing political education
mandates but still hold to the unchanging principles that every child
can and will succeed."- Robert John Meehan

"The pupil who is never required to do what he cannot do, never does what he can do."- John Stuart Mill

"Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons
of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights
are to be found only in studying the exemplary."- Warren G. Bennis

"The answer lies in preventing failures not in looking for better ways to fix the children who are failing."- William Glasser

"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them become what they are capable of becoming." - Goethe

"The great teacher is not the man who supplies the most facts, but the one in whose presence we become different people."- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Strive
to be remembered as that teacher that constantly aimed for the
exemplary, that never settled for the mediocre and that invariably
taught with a limitless passion and vigor. By having accomplished this,
you will most certainly have made this world a far far better place for
a great many
of our young people."- Robert John Meehan

"Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant."- Epictetus

"I cannot be a teacher without exposing who I am."- Paulo Freire

"You might be just one person to the world, but you might be the world to one young student."- Robert John Meehan

"Children want the same things we want. To laugh, to be challenged, to be entertained, and delighted." - Dr. Seuss

"A key to growing as a teacher is to keep company mainly with teachers who
uplift you, whose presence inspire you and whose dedication drives you."- Robert John Meehan

"The excitement of learning separates youth from old age. As long as you are learning you're not old."- Rosalyn Sussman

"Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today." – Malcolm X
"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."- Mahatma Gandhi
"Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to; convinced that on their good sense we may rely with most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty."-Thomas Jefferson

"Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education." - John Fitzgerald Kennedy

"Every truth has four corners: as a teacher I give you one corner, and it is for you to find the other three." - Confucius

"Developing a desire to learn is the kindling point of all classroom achievement."- Robert John Meehan

"It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it."- Jacob Bronowski

"Becoming
an exemplary teacher is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of the
choices we make; it is not something that simply comes with experience,
it is something that must be purposefully achieved."- Robert John Meehan

"We teach what we like to learn and the reason many people go into
teaching is vicariously to reexperience the primary joy experienced the
first time they learned something they loved."- Stephen Brookfield

"Do your best, give your best and know that in doing so you will enhance the quality of a child's life.' - Robert John Meehan

"Find a way to delight in all students. Look for the best, expect the
best, and find something in each child [you] can treasure." - Steven Levy
"The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth."- John F. Kennedy

"I began learning long ago that those who are happiest are those who do the most for others."- Booker T. Washington

"A teacher needs to have the vision and conviction that dreams can and will be achieved."- Robert John Meehan

"The world we have created is a product of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking." - Albert Einstein

"Good teaching is forever being on the cutting edge of a child's competence."- Jerome Bruner

"Expecting all children the same age to learn from the same materials is like expecting all children the same age to wear the same size clothing."- Madeline Hunter

"Great
schools are nurtured with the cooperation of many teachers with a
common vision working toward a common goal of extraordinary student
achievement."- Robert John Meehan

"The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education."- Maya Angelou

"Every
time I hear another hedge fund manager talk about school reform, I
worry even more about the direction education reform is taking."- Robert
John Meehan

"The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is him/herself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow."- Paulo Freire

"Man's mind stretched by a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions."- Oliver Wendell Holmes

"One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child."- Carl Jung

"As teachers, we have the ability to rebuild the world for our students.
By our sincere efforts we can make their world more rewarding, more
gratifying and perhaps... even more significant." Robert John Meehan

"To stimulate life, leaving it then free to develop, to unfold, herein lies the first task of the teacher."- Maria Montessori

"Teachers, I believe, are the most responsible and important members of society because their professional efforts affect the fate of the earth."-Helen Caldicott,

"We should not teach children the sciences but give them a taste for them." - Jean Jacques Rousseau

"A well prepared and engaging teacher is a catalyst... a spark that
creates the desire to learn in our students."- Robert John Meehan

"Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification."- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it."- Pablo Picasso

"In education it isn't how much you have committed to memory or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't. It's knowing where to go to find out what you need to know and it's knowing how to use the information you get."-William Feather

"There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million." - Walt Streightiff

"One's work may be finished some day, but one's education never." – Alexander Dumas

"A
gifted teacher is not only prepared to meet the needs of today's child,
but is also prepared to foresee the hopes and dreams in every child's
future." ~ Robert John Meehan

"Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each."- Plato

"As
Teachers, we should be the waves that drift around, lift and propel our
students out to new places beyond the security of each student's own
presumed harbor."- Robert John Meehan

"My heart is singing for joy this morning. A miracle has happened! The light of understanding has shone upon my little pupil's mind, and behold, all things are changed."- Anne Sullivan

"To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge."- Benjamin Disraeli

"The most extraordinary thing about a really good teacher is that he or she transcends accepted educational methods. Such methods are designed to help average teachers approximate the performance of good teachers."- Margaret Mead

"Many things can wait. Children cannot. Today their bones are being formed, their blood is being made, their senses are being developed. To them we cannot say "tomorrow." Their name is today. - Gabriela Mistral

"Pursue confidently your dreams of being a teacher. Teach each day as
you once imagined you would. Don't let today's obstacles keep you from
yesterday's dreams."- Robert John Meehan

"Mediocre teachers tend to talk mostly about teaching. Exemplary
teachers talk almost exclusively about learning."- Robert John Meehan

"Too
many students don’t know what success feels like, thus repeated failure
is no longer scary or painful, it’s become the norm. Help create a new
norm."- Robert John Meehan

"If
we really want to improve our ed system, we need to listen to educators
not businessmen who want to sell something as a magic bullet."- Robert
John Meehan

"In teaching it is the method and not the content that is the message."- Ashley Montague

"Great teachers have high expectations for their students, but higher expectations for themselves."- Todd Whitaker

"To be a success in the classroom, a student's attitude is equally as important as his ability."- Robert John Meehan

“The test of a good teacher is not how many questions he can ask his
pupils that they will answer readily, but how many questions he inspires
them to ask him which he finds it hard to answer”- Alice Wellington
Rollins

"Pursue confidently your dreams of being a
teacher. Teach each day as you once imagined you would. Don't let
today's obstacles keep you from yesterday's dreams." Robert John Meehan

"To waken interest and kindle enthusiasm is the sure way to teach easily and successfully."- Tyron Edwards

"Merely to stuff the child with a lot of information, making him pass examinations, is the most unintelligent form of education."- Jiddu Krishnamurti

"As
Teachers, we should be the waves that drift around, lift and propel our
students out to new places beyond the security of each student's own
presumed harbor."- Robert John Meehan

"Where your talents and the needs of your students meet there lies your calling as a teacher."- Robert John Meehan

"Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength of the nation." - John F. Kennedy

"Human beings are full of emotion, and the teacher who knows how to use it will have dedicated learners. It means sending dominant signals instead of submissive ones with your eyes, body and voice." - Leon Lessinger

"If kids come to us from strong, healthy functioning families, it makes our job easier. If they do not come to us from strong, healthy, functioning families, it makes our job more important."- Barbara Colorose

"Our teaching should always be artfully crafted. It should impart something that is
in itself sacred to the senses of our students."- Robert John Meehan

"Teach with a renewed appreciation of its consequences and you will never
cease to realize the infinite possibilities within your reach."- Robert John Meehan"Although most would see them only as an ocean of small faces, as teachers
we see them as the waves that propel us." - Robert John Meehan

"Don't struggle to be a better teacher than everybody else. Simply be a
better teacher than you ever thought you could be."- Robert John Meehan

"If we are truly effective teachers, then
we are creating autonomous, independent, and self directed learners."-
Robert John Meehan

"Be diligent in trusting that what we do in the classroom could
possibly echo for a lifetime in the heart of a student."- Robert John
Meehan

"The quality of an exemplary teacher is demonstrated by their willingness
to set and maintain the highest standards for themselves and students."- Robert John Meehan

"Great classrooms are characterized by
positive, open relationships, mutual respect, and a shared
responsibility for the learning process."- Robert John Meehan

"Exemplary teachers will always care more about the
people their students will become than the scores on tests they take."-
Robert John Meehan

"Your passion as a teacher must be students, not school. Anything else is a road to burnout."- Justin Storz

"If we do not plant knowledge when young, it will give us no shade when we are old." - Lord Chesterfield

"All of us do not have equal talent, but all of us should have an equal opportunity to develop our talent."- John F. Kennedy

"Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher."- Japanese Proverb

"One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation." - Arthur Ashe

"Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all." - Aristotle

"When we strive to become better teachers than we are, everyone in our classroom becomes better too."- Robert John Meehan

"A saint is one who makes goodness attractive. Surely, a great teacher does the same thing for education."- Laurence Houseman

"When you appeal to the highest level of thinking, you get the highest level of performance."- Jack Stack

"The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."- Mark Twain

"The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men."- Bill Beattie

"If I ran a school, I'd give the average grade to the ones who gave me all the right answers, for being good parrots. I'd give the top grades to those who made a lot of mistakes and told me about them, and then told me what they learned from them."- R. Buckminster Fuller

"Children have to be educated, but they have also to be left to educate themselves."- Abbe Dimnet

"We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction." - Malcom Gladwell

"The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education."- Paul Karl Feyerabend

"Education is a progressive discovery of our ignorance."- William James "Will" Durant

"Those that make test scores and grades the heart of education hit their targets while entirely missing the point."- Joe Bower

"If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow." - John Dewey

"Seldom will you find a person happy with their successes in life but
who can't name a teacher that inspired them along the way." - Robert John Meehan

"If you're interested, you will do what is convenient; if you're committed, you'll do whatever it takes."- J. Assaraf

"Our heritage and ideals, our code and standards -- the things we live by and teach our children -- are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings." - Walt(er) Elias Disney

"The great end of education is to discipline rather than to furnish the mind; to train it to the use of its own powers, rather than fill it with the accumulation of others."- Tryon Edwards

"We should all be asking "What questions did you ask at school today?"- Robert John Meehan

"Every
child should have a caring adult in their lives. And that's not always a
biological parent or family member.
Often times it must me a teacher." Robert John Meehan

"I
seldom needed to encourage my students to follow their dreams, I simply
gave my students the tools and as much freedom as they needed to chase after them."-
Robert John Meehan

“The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of
his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.”- Kahlil
Gibran

"No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete."- Gilbert K. Chesterton

"What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul."- Joseph Addison

"There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you can't move, and the kind that just gives you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies."- Robert Frost

"The shrewd guess, the fertile hypothesis, the courageous leap to a tentative conclusion - these are the most valuable coin of the thinker at work. But in most schools guessing is heavily penalized and is associated somehow with laziness."- Jerome S. Bruner

"School is where you go between when your parents can't take you and industry can't take you."- John Updike

"One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community." - Albert Einstein

"I'm willing to wager that not one of our students' dreams include being proficient on a standardized test."- Robert John Meehan

"No one but us ourselves-no one can and no one way. We ourselves must walk the path, teachers merely show the way."- Nancy Wilson Ross

"Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers." - Voltaire

"Too many students don’t know what success feels like, thus failure is
no longer scary or painful, it’s become the norm. Create a new norm."-
Robert John Meehan

“No man can be a good teacher unless he has feelings of warm affection
toward his pupils and a genuine desire to impart to them what he
believes to be of value.”- Bertrand Russell

"A teacher is a compass that activates the magnets of curiosity, knowledge, and wisdom in the pupils." - Ever Garrison

"The best learners... often make the worst teachers. They are, in a
very real sense, perceptually challenged. They cannot imagine what it
must be like to struggle to learn something that comes so naturally to
them."- Stephen Brookfield

"We didn't go into teaching to get rich, but to enrich others."- Robert John Meehan

"Teachers teach because they care. Teaching young people is what they do best. It requires long hours, patience, and care."- Horace Mann

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." - Albert Einstein

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." - Winston Churchill

"Compassionate teachers fill a void left by working parents who aren't able to devote enough attention to their children. Teachers don't just teach; they can be vital personalities who help young people to mature, to understand the world and to understand themselves. A good education consists of much more than useful facts and marketable skills."
-Charles Platt

"May your walls know joy; May every room hold laughter and every window open to great possibility."- Maryanne Radmacher-Hershey

"Facing a mirror you see merely your own countenance; facing your child
you understand how everyone else has seen you."- Daniel Raeburn

"Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence."- Abigail Adams

"There's no word in the language I revere more than 'teacher.' My heart sings when a kid refers to me as his teacher, and it always has. I've honored myself and the entire family of man by becoming a teacher."- Pat Conroy

"I never teach my pupils. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn."- Albert Einstein

"Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher."- Japanese Proverb

"Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning." - William Arthur Ward

"The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their
greatest happiness in using it." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in." - Deepak Chopra

"Our society as a whole across all economic and political levels,
values things, toys, status and entertainment far more than it does
children."- Robert John Meehan

"Aerodynamically the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly, but the
bumblebee doesn't know that so it goes on flying anyway." - Mary Kay Ash

"Persistent questioning and healthy inquisitiveness are the first requisite for acquiring learning of any kind." - Gandhi

"Education would be much more effective if its purpose was to ensure
that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how
much they do not know and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it."- William Haley

"The purpose of education is to enlighten the student as to how to use
their own mind, rather than to fill it with facts for a test."- Robert John Meehan

"School improvement is most surely and thoroughly achieved when teachers engage in frequent, continuous and increasingly concrete talk about teaching practices... capable of distinguishing one practice and it's virtue from another."- Judith Warren

"Children have real understanding only of that which they invent themselves, and each time that we try to teach them too quickly, we keep them from reinventing it themselves."- Piaget

"How has the world of the child changed in the last 150 years?" The answer is. "It's hard to imagine any way in which it hasn't changed.They're immersed in all kinds of stuff that was unheard of 150 years ago, and yet if you look at schools today versus 100 years ago, they are more similar than dissimilar."- Peter Senge

"Ten geographers who think the world is flat will tend to reinforce each others errors.Only a sailor can set them straight." John R. Saul

"What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon it destroys our democracy."- John Dewey

“If kids come to us from strong, healthy functioning families, it
makes our job easier. If they do not come to us from strong, healthy,
functioning families, it makes our job more important.”- Barbara
Colorose

"The whole being of any Teacher is within our own hearts. Although an education
prepares us to teach, it is the love of learning that sustains us."- Robert John Meehan

"Strive
to be remembered as that teacher that constantly aimed for the
exemplary, that never settled for the mediocre and that invariably
taught with a limitless passion and vigor. By having accomplished this,
you will most certainly have made this world a far far better place for
a great many
of our young people." Robert John Meehan

"Exemplary
teachers are more than just teacher trained Professionals, they are
also highly trained PROFESSIONAL LEARNERS!"- Robert John Meehan

"The quality of an exemplary teacher is demonstrated by their willingness
to set and maintain the highest standards for themselves and students."- Robert John Meehan

"The point is to develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition and to guide the child over to important fields for society. Such a school demands from the teacher that he be a kind of artist in his province." - Albert Einstein

"A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a
desire to learn is hammering on cold iron." - Horace Mann

“Every day that you teach you have two options: be focused, passionate
and caring, or to be focused, passionate and caring.”- Robert John
Meehan

"what a child can do today with assistance, she will be able to do by herself tomorrow." - Lev Vygotsky

"The real object of education is to have a man in the condition of continually asking questions."- Bishop Creighton

“Teachers are expected to reach unattainable goals with inadequate
tools. The miracle is that at times they accomplish this impossible
task.”- Dr. Haim Ginott

"The road to freedom, here and everywhere, begins in the classroom."- Hubert H. Humphrey

"I am almost overwhelmed by the courage and dedication of teachers." -Sylvia Solomon

"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge."- Albert Einstein

"For these are all our children. We will profit by, or pay for, whatever they become."- James Baldwin

"You cannot teach a man anything.; you can only help him to find it for himself."- Galileo Galilei

"For most of us teaching is not just what earns our paycheck. Teaching is what we were put on earth to do."- Robert John Meehan

"Who dares to teach must never cease to learn." - John Cotton Dana

"The principle goal of education is to create men and woman who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done." - Jean Piaget

"As
Teachers, we should be the waves that drift around, lift and propel our
students out to new places beyond the security of each student's own
presumed harbor."- Robert John Meehan

"Great classrooms are characterized by
positive, open relationships, mutual respect, and a shared
responsibility for the learning process."- Robert John Meehan

"The things taught in colleges and schools are not an education, but the means of education." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children." - Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

"There is an old saying that the course of civilization is a race between catastrophe and education. In a democracy such as ours, we must make sure that education wins the race."- John F. Kennedy

"My goal is simple. It is complete understanding of the universe, why it as it is and why it exists as all."- Stephen Hawking

"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn."- Benjamin Franklin

"All it takes for evil to triumph in this world is for good men to do nothing"- Edmund Burke

"A hundred years from now, it will not matter what kind of car I drove,
what kind of house I lived in, how much money I had in the bank...but
the world may be a better place because I made a difference in the life
of a child."- Forest Witcraft

"We must view young people not as empty bottles to be filled, but as candles to be lit."-Robert H. Shaffer

"The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."- Eric Hoffer

"Students and teachers do not exist just within a school, they exist
within communities ... we also need to have community improvement plans."-
Robert John Meehan

"We should turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able to learn whatever needs to be learned." - John Holt

"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Stephen Hawking

"What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches."- Karl Menninger

"We are shaped and fashioned by what we love." - Goethe

"Perseverance is the hard work you do in the classroom after you get
tired of doing the hard work you already did."- Robert John Meehan

"Many children struggle in schools... because the way they are being taught is incompatible with the way they learn."- Peter Senge

"All human beings are born with unique gifts. The healthy functioning community depends on realizing the capacity to develop each gift." - Peter Senge

"I am not a teacher, but an awakener"- Robert Frost

"Teachers must create an environment for students where their past
failures are irrelevant to the learning occurring in their classrooms."-
Robert John Meehan"If you want to achieve widespread impact and lasting value, be bold." - Howard Schultz
"Teaching is a journey... but one where it's good news when you lose your baggage."- Robert John Meehan

"The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change." - Carl Rogers

"Think for a moment about the people who have inspired you most in your
life. Chances are, one of them was a teacher."- Robert John Meehan

"Every time you wake up and ask yourself, "What good things am I going to do today?," remember that when the sun goes down at sunset, it takes a part of your life with it." -Indian proverb

"What did you ask at school today?" - Richard Fenyman

"We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free." - Epictetus

"No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness, and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure."- Emma Golmam

"Our achievements as teachers are shaped by the climate of our
classrooms and the strength of our preparation."- Robert John Meehan

"Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon." - Edward Morgan Forster

"An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't." - Anatole France

"The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else." - John W(illiam) Gardner

"Teachers believe they have a gift for giving; it drives them with the same irrepressible drive that drives others to create a work of art or a market or a building."- A(ngelo) Bartlett Giamatti

"Much that passes for education ... is not education at all but ritual. The fact is that we are being educated when we know it least." - David P(ierpont) Gardner

"The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards." - Anatole France

"If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children." - Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

"True teachers illuminate the path to achievement, believing the best
way to predict a child's future is to help create it."- Robert John
Meehan

"Teachers are the only professionals who have to respond to bells every
forty-five minutes and come out fighting."- Frank McCourt
"I believe that the testing of the student's achievements in order to see if he meets some criterion held by the teacher, is directly contrary to the implications of therapy for significant learning." - Carl Rogers

"Life's most urgent question is: What are you doing for others?"- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Education begins at home. You can't blame the school for not putting into your child what you don't put into him." - Geoffrey Holder

"True teachers rise to the top not by chance but through passion and purpose."- Robert John Meehan

"If ever there can be a cause worthy to be upheld by all sacrifice that
the human heart can endure, it is the cause of education."-Horace Mann

"Teaching children skills without giving them a vision for a better future is only training."- Nido Qubein

“One mark of a great educator is the ability to lead students out to new
places where even the educator has never been”- Thomas Groome

"Teach a child how to think, not what to think." - Sidney Sugarman

"Great schools are nurtured with the cooperation of many teachers with a
common vision working toward a common goal of extraordinary student
achievement."- Robert John Meehan

"No printed word, nor spoken plea can teach young minds what they should
be, but what the teachers are themselves."- Rudyard Kipling

“Don't try to fix the students, fix ourselves first. The good teacher
makes the poor student good and the good student superior. When our
students fail, we, as teachers, too, have failed.”- Marva Collins

"I touch the future. I teach." - Christa McAuliffe

"Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best." - Bob Talbert

"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops."- Henry Brooks Adams

"I have been maturing as a teacher. New experiences bring new sensitivities and flexibility."- Howard Lester

"Great classrooms are characterized by positive, open relationships,
mutual respect, and a shared responsibility for the learning process"-
Robert John Meehan.

''Educating the masses was intended only to improve the relationship between the top and the bottom of society. Not for changing the nature of the relationship."- John Ralston Paul

"If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself." - Confucius

"The teacher is one who makes two ideas grow where only one grew before." - Elbert Hubbard

“Experience fails to teach where there is no desire to learn.”- George Bernard Shaw

"Teaching does not come from a political mandate...it comes from the heart"- Robert John Meehan

"He who opens a school door, closes a prison." -Victor Hugo

"The aim of education is the knowledge not of fact, but of values."- William Ralph Inge

“The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.”'- Plato

"The strength of our teaching lies in the depth of our convictions and the integrity of our goals."- Robert John Meehan

"Human beings are full of emotion, and the teacher who knows how to use it will have dedicated learners. It means sending dominant signals instead of submissive ones with your eyes, body and voice." - Leon Lessinger

"The highest respect should go to those teachers who let their actions rise above other teachers' excuses."- Robert John Meehan

"Although the teachers or the students are not the same, the person in charge of education is being formed or re-formed as he/she teaches, and the person who is being taught forms him/herself in the process. …There is, in fact, no teaching without learning."- Paulo Freire

"Teachers are expected to reach unattainable goals with inadequate tools. The miracle is that at times they accomplish this impossible task"- Haim G. Ginott

"Education and the process of educating is a total integral, contextual situation which includes students, teachers, parents, administration and environment."- Jean Huston

"To teach is to learn twice." - Joseph Joubert

"Teachers are unique problem solvers by character, temperament, and
resilience. Teachers can not be manufactured."- Robert John Meehan

"Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction. Joblessness is a weapon of mass destruction, homelessness, a weapon of mass destruction... racism, a weapon of mass destruction, fear, a weapon of mass destruction. We must disarm these weapons and renew our commitment to quality public schools and dedicated teachers and good housing and quality health care and decent jobs and stronger neighborhoods."- Dennis Kucinich
"Modern cynics and skeptics... see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing."- John F. Kennedy

"The good teacher discovers the natural gifts of his pupils and liberates them."- Stephen Neil

"If we do not plant knowledge when young, it will give us no shade when we are old." - Lord Chesterfield

"Children need to be challenged and pushed, not to the point where they
give up but to the point where they think, "Wow, look at me go!"- Robert John Meehan

"Ideal teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross, then having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create bridges of their own."- Nikos Kazantzakis

"What nobler employment, or more valuable to the state, than that of the
man who instructs the rising generation."- Marcus Tullius Cicero

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."- Aristotle

"Make sure that our methodology is not simply packaging old wine in new
bottles. Teaching today requires a whole new vineyard."- Robert John
Meehan

"We must reject all notions of 'reform' that serve up more of the same: more testing, more 'standards', more uniformity, more conformity, more bureaucracy."- Tom Peters

“No man can be a good teacher unless he has feelings of warm affection toward his pupils and a genuine desire to impart to them what he believes to be of value.”- Bertrand Russell

"The real object of education is to have a man in the condition of continually asking questions."- Bishop Creighton

"If we are truly effective teachers, then we are creating autonomous,
independent, and self directed learners, not just successful test takers."- Robert John Meehan

"The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet."- William Gibson

"More important than the curriculum is the question of the methods of teaching and the spirit in which the teaching is given”- Bertrand Russell

"As a teacher I spent a lot of time studying the "art of selling" to get
a better perspective of what I was trying to accomplish as a teacher.
After all, aren't we in the business of getting students to "buy into"
what we are doing?"- Robert John Meehan

“The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.”- Winston Churchill

"The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know."- Simone Weil

"If a teacher does not involve himself, his values, his commitments, in the course of discussion, why should the students?"- Paul Wellstone

"Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each."- Plato

"We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself."- Lloyd Alexander

"Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one’s self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily."-Thomas Szasz

"Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of both mind and body will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day."-Thomas Jefferson

"We all need to go into the classroom believing our students can and
will meet and often exceed our expectations."- Robert John Meehan

"We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion."- Hegel

"A teacher has to be ON every moment of the day, despite his/her actual state of mind."- Robert John Meehan

"Parents and educators need to establish a culture in which security and clarity of expectations are balanced with the encouragement of playfulness, inquisitiveness and self reliance."- Guy Claxton

"If we want to help children learn and develop, it is important that we don't push or pull them - just walk with them." - Robert John Meehan

"A republican government should be based on free and equal education among the people"- Susan B.Anthony

"Competition in education, by design, is intended to "leave children
behind." Competition, by design, creates winners and losers."- Robert John Meehan

"The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize."- Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom."- George Washington Carver

"Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people may be engaged in." - Abraham Lincoln

"Many reformers have foolishly accepted at face value that teachers in
lower income schools are less effective. They couldn't be more wrong."-
Robert John Meehan

"Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents,
for these only gave life, those the art of living well."- Aristotle

"It's tragic that we are mandated to turn so many eager young learners into frustrated test performers."- Robert John Meehan

"Schooling, instead of encouraging the asking of questions, too often discourages it."- Madeleine L'Engle"The child becomes largely what it is taught; hence we must watch what we teach it, and how we live before it."- Jane Addams"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most
intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." - Charles Darwin

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget
what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." -
Maya Angelou

"Twenty years from now, your name may be forgotten...but the world will
be a better place because you made a difference as a teacher."- Robert
John Meehan

“When you love people and have the desire to make a profound, positive
impact upon the world, then will you have accomplished the meaning to
live.”- Sasha Azevedo

"To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching."- Henri Frederic Amiel

"Measuring human growth and development is not like measuring the
reproduction of a single model on an assembly line. It is a complex
system of helping to figure out where a student is, and how to help
them get where they are going."- Robert John Meehan

"Education is the guardian genius of democracy. It is the only dictator
that free men recognize, and the only ruler that free men require."-
Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar
“Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee.”- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"A master can tell you what he expects of you. A teacher, though, awakens your own expectations."- Patricia Neal

"Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army."- Edward Everett

"Nine-tenths of education is encouragement."- Anatole France

"Republicans fear caps on CEO pay/bonuses will drain talent from those
jobs. Shouldn't they have same fears about slashing teacher comp and pay?"-
Robert John Meehan

"A teacher's job is to take a bunch of live wires and see that they are well-grounded."- D. Martin

"The true aim of every one who aspires to be a teacher should be, not to
impart his own opinions, but to kindle minds."- F. W. Robertson
"To waken interest and kindle enthusiasm is the sure way to teach easily and successfully." -Tryon Edwards

"Authentic student achievement cannot be measured by test scores alone but also by
the small day to day moments of our students’ individual triumphs."- Robert John Meehan

"Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the
hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant."-
Epictetus

"I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well."- Alexander of Macedon
"To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. To attain it we
must be able to guess what will interest: we must learn to read the
childish soul as we might a piece of music. Then, by simply changing the
key, we keep up the attraction anil vary the song."- Henri Frederic
Amiel

"Education is the transmission of civilization."-Will Durant

"It is shortsighted to believe that better education comes from setting
up schools that exclude the very children needing the most help."-
Robert John Meehan

"Strengthen me by sympathizing with my strength, not my weakness."- Amos Bronson Alcott"Be a wonderful role model because you will be the window through which many children will see their future."- Thomas Mckinnon"The philosophy of the classroom today will be the philosophy of government tomorrow."- Abraham Lincoln
"A child miseducated is a child lost."- John F. Kennedy.

"If we balance the budget on the back of the educational system, we will
be paying for it for years to come."- Robert John Meehan

"Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire." - William Butler Yeats

"A teacher's job is to take a bunch of live wires and see that they are well-grounded."- D. Martin
"It's easy to make a buck. It's a lot tougher to make a difference."- Tom Brokaw

"Excellence in education is when we do everything that we can to make
sure they become everything that they can." − Carol Ann Tomlinson
"It is the open mindedness and the seeking out of new information and
practices that insures teachers continued success in the classroom.."-
Robert John Meehan

“Only secretly rebellious teachers have ever done right by our least advantaged kids.”- Deborah Meier
"Children are made readers on the laps of their parents." - Emilie Buchwald

"Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results". - John Dewey

"Good timber does not grow with ease; the stronger the wind, the stronger the trees"- J. Willard Marriott

"Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers" - Socrates (420 BC)

"Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave." - Henry Peter Broughan

"Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you'll never cease to grow." - Anthony J. D'Angelo

" It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question." - Eugene Ionesco Decouvertes

"Administrators need to shift from being controllers to enablers, so as to liberate the energies and talents of the teachers.-"Steve Denning

"A student's progress should be measured in terms of the questions they are asking, not merely by the answers that they are reciting"- Robert John Meehan

"Human beings are full of emotion, and the teacher who knows how to use it will have dedicated learners."- Leon Lessinger

"Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why." - Bernard Mannes Baruch

"Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work." - Aristotle

"Teamwork is the fuel that allows common teachers to obtain uncommon results."- Robert John Meehan

"One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child."- Carl Jung

"A master can tell you what he expects of you. A teacher, though, awakens your own expectations."- Patricia Neal

"My love is thine to teach; teach it but how, And thou shalt see how apt it is to learn. Any hard lesson that may do thee good."- William Shakespeare

"The reward of witnessing the blossoming of a student's once dormant
"will to learn" is well worth the moments of adversity leading up to it."- Robert John Meehan

"What nobler employment, or more valuable to the state, than that of the man who instructs the rising generation?" - Cicero

"The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without a teacher." - Elbert Hubbard

"If a man keeps cherishing his old knowledge, so as continually be acquiring new, he may be a teacher of others." - Confucius

"My joy in learning is partly that it enables me to teach." - Seneca

"Nothing is so fatal to the well being of our children as remaining
indifferent to the education we provide them.- "Robert John Meehan

"Teachers who educated children deserved more honor than parents who merely gave them birth; for bare life is furnished by the one, the other ensures a good life." - Aristotle

"Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary." - Warren G. Bennis

"We discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being."- Maria Montessori

"Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing." - Denis Waitley

"I have long enjoyed the friendship and companionship of Republicans because I am by instinct a teacher, and I would like to teach them something."- Woodrow Wilson

"I saw as a teacher how, if you take that spark of learning that those children have, and you ignite it, you can take a child from any background to a lifetime of creativity and accomplishment."- Paul Wellstone

"Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater."- William Hazlitt

"To transform schools successfully, we need to navigate the difficult space between letting go of old strategies and grabbing on to new ones."- Robert John Meehan

"The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called "truth"."- Dan Rather

"The processes of teaching the child that everything cannot be as he wills it are apt to be painful both to him and to his teacher."- Anne Sullivan Macy

"As a student I learned from wonderful teachers and ever since then I've thought everyone is a teacher."- Bill Moyers

"Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual."- Arthur Koestler

"Everyone who remembers his own education remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. The teacher is the heart of the educational system."- Sidney Hook

“Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.”- C. S. Lewis

"My heart is singing for joy this morning. A miracle has happened! The light of understanding has shone upon my little pupil's mind, and behold, all things are changed."- Anne Sullivan

"Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may make you feel like you're flying high at first, but it won't take long before you feel the impact."- US President Barack Obama

“We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.” - Lord Alexander

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle

"The important thing is not to stop questioning."- Albert Einstein

"We must reject all notions of 'reform' that serve up more of the same: more testing, more 'standards', more uniformity, more conformity, more bureaucracy. "- Tom Peters

"All human beings are born with unique gifts. The healthy functioning of our community depends on its capacity to develop each gift."- Peter Senge

"To narrow down our curriculum and focus to just what is “on the test” can take away the inquiry, passion, and the joy of learning."- Robert John Meehan

"I am entirely certain that twenty years from now we will look back at education as it is practiced in most schools today and wonder how we could tolerated anything so primitive."- John W Gardner

"We imagine a school in which students and teachers excitedly and joyfully stretch themselves to their limits in pursuit of projects built on their vision...not one that succeeds in making apathetic students satisfying minimal standards."- S Papert

"Too many young people are being taught to give up their dreams before they have any experience attempting to pursue them"- Robert Fritz

"Too many decisions about ed reform are made by people untouched by the change process."- Robert John Meehan

"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most
intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." - Charles Darwin"No printed word, nor spoken plea can teach young minds what they should
be, but what the teachers are themselves."- Rudyard Kipling
"Passion mutates into procedures, into rules and roles. Instead of purpose, we focus on policies. Instead of being free to create, we impose constraints that squeeze the life out of us."- Margaret Wheatley

"Systems of schooling are over managed and under led."-Thomas Sergiovanni

"Focus on growth. Not approval."- Nancy Wolfson

"Does our society as a whole across all economic and political levels,
value things, toys, status and entertainment far more than it does
children?"- Robert John Meehan"In schools the main problem is not the absence of innovations but the presence of too many disconnected... piecemeal, superficially adorned projects... We are over our heads."- Michael Fullan

"One of the saddest things about US education is that the wisdom of our most successful teachers is lost to the profession when they retire."- John Dewey

"Learning can be defined as a process of progressive change from
ignorance to knowledge, and from indifference to understanding."- Robert John meehan

"Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous." - Confucius

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." - Albert Einstein

"Clearly, if there's an outbreak of forest fires, the corporate education reformers would fire the veteran firefighters and hire new ones!"- Robert John Meehan

"I believe one of the most important priorities is to do whatever we do as well as we can." - Victor Kermit Kiam

"What nobler employment, or more valuable to the state, than that of the man who instructs the rising generation?" - Cicero

"Often we do a greater amount of good when we "listen" to our students than when we "teach" them."- Robert John Meehan

"Modern cynics and skeptics...see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing." --John F. Kennedy

"Great teachers empathize with kids, respect them, and believe that each one has something special that can be built upon." - Ann Lieberman

"Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are endless."- Mother Teresa

"In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day's work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years." - Jacques Barzun

"As a teacher you have to be committed to
learning for a lifetime first before you can lead your students down
that path." - Robert John Meehan

"Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten." - B. F. Skinner

"What
keeps teachers going has largely to do with their inner lives. It is
their inner spirit that makes and sustains good teachers."- Robert John
Meehan

"You never will be the person you can be if pressure, tension and discipline are taken out of your life."- Dr. James G. Bilkey

"You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?"- George Bernard Shaw

"Zeal without knowledge is fire without light."- Thomas Fuller

"Our
teaching should always be artfully crafted. It should impart something
that is in itself sacred to the senses of our students."- Robert John
Meehan

"Children cannot bounce off the walls if we take away the walls."- Erin Kenny

"Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of man." - Horace Mann

"Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee."- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"A child's creativity is only limited by their parents' willingness to clean up after them."- Robert John Meehan

"We think too much about effective methods of teaching and not enough about effective methods of learning."- John Carolus
"Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books." - Sir John Lubbock

"The task of the excellent teacher is to stimulate 'apparently ordinary' people to unusual effort. The tough problem is not in identifying winners: it is in making winners out of ordinary people."- K. Patricia Cross

"If real learning is to take place, our classrooms must be dependent on
the collaboration of its learners, not solely on the knowledge of its
teachers."- Robert John Meehan

"Be a wonderful role model because you will be the window through which many children will see their future."- Thomas Mckinnon

"Ideal teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross, then having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create bridges of their own." - Nikos Kazantzakis

"Learning is finding out what we already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, and teachers."- Richard Bach

"Excellence
is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are
everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in
studying the exemplary."- Warren G. Bennis

"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them become what they are capable of becoming." - Goethe

"In education it isn't how much you have committed to memory or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't. It's knowing where to go to find out what you need to know and it's knowing how to use the information you get."- William Feather

"It shouldn't matter how slowly a child learns as long as we are encouraging them not to stop." Robert John Meehan

"If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, the excitement, and the mystery of the world we live in." - Rachel Carlson

"Every time you wake up and ask yourself, "What good things am I going to do today?," remember that when the sun goes down at sunset, it takes a part of your life with it." - Indian proverb

"Even the most talented teacher cannot be fully successful in a
dysfunctional system over which they have little control or input."- Robert John Meehan

"I challenge you to make your life like a masterpiece. I challenge you to join the ranks of those people who live what they teach, who walk their talk." - Anthony Robbins

"Pursue confidently your dreams of being a teacher. Teach each day as
you once imagined you would. Don't let today's obstacles keep you from
yesterday's dreams."- Robert John Meehan

"We as educators need to reconsider our roles in students' lives, to think of ourselves as connectors first and content experts second." - Will Richardson

"It's not about thinking outside of the box. It's about realizing there is no box."- Jari Askins

"Teachers are about the brightest stars in our constellation."- Peter Reynolds

"Most teachers can come to a general consensus that our plates are full.
Working smarter, longer and harder isn't always enough. Yet...we persevere."- Robert John Meehan

"The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things." Plato

"Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children."- Sitting Bull

"I seldom needed to encourage my students to follow their dreams, I
simply gave my students the tools and as much freedom as they needed to
chase after them."- Robert John Meehan

"Explaining the intended learning in student-friendly terms at the outset of a lesson is the critical first step in helping students know where they are going."- Rick Striggins

"Those who know about education have no power; those who have the power know little or nothing about education."- Marion Brady

"Education reform does not necessarily assure progress, but progress implacably requires change. As teachers, change has always been our goal."- Robert John Meehan

"The child becomes largely what it is taught; hence we must watch what we teach it, and how we live before it."- Jane Addams

"Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts."- Henry Adams

"The gift of teaching is a peculiar talent, and implies a need and a craving in the teacher himself."- John Jay Chapman

"He who asks a question may be a fool for five minutes; he who asks no questions stays a fool forever."- Chinese Proverb

"We are currently preparing students for jobs and technologies that don't yet exist... In order to solve problems we don't even know are problems yet."- Karl Fisch

"It is not sufficient, and it may actually undermine our democracy, to concentrate on producing people who do well on standardized tests and who define success as getting a well-paid job." – Nel Noddings

"The habits we form from childhood make no small difference, but rather they make all the difference."– Aristotle

"I believe that education is all about being excited about something. Seeing passion and enthusiasm helps push an educational message." – Steve Irwin

"It is not so important to have all the answers as to be hungry for them."- Carol Ann Tomlinson"I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught."- Winston Churchill

"All learning begins when our comfortable ideas turn out to be inadequate."- John Dewey

"Every time I see another hedge fund manager talk about school reform, I worry even more about the direction ed reform is taking."- Robert John Meehan

"A gifted teacher has an unfailing eye for magical classrooms &
loses sleep over anything less than the highest quality."- Carol Tomlinson

"Too many children now think learning is filling in answer bubbles. The experience of learning has been replaced by multiple choice tests."- Robert John Meehan

"In every story I have heard, good teachers share one trait: a strong
sense of personal identity infuses their work."- Parker Palme

"Good teaching is forever being on the cutting edge of a child's competence."- Jerome Bruner
"We can wherever we choose, successfully teach all children... we
already know more than we need to know in order to do that."- Ron Edmonds

"Teachers must be encouraged - I almost said 'freed', to pursue an
education that strives for depth of understanding."- Howard Gardner

"The excitement of learning separates youth from old age. As long as you are learning you're not old."- Rosalyn Sussman

"Children need models more than they need critics."- Joseph Joubert

"One's work may be finished some day, but one's education never." – Alexander Dumas

"If our American way of life fails the child, it fails us all."- Pearl S. Buck

"Changing the way we teach is a lot easier than changing the way students learn."- Robert John Meehan

"We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today. "- Stacia Tauscher

"Failures are divided into two classes — those who thought and never
did, and those who did and never thought."- John Charles Salak

"We owe our children, the most vulnerable citizens in our society, a life free of violence and fear."- Nelson Mandela

"You know that you are a teacher when you spend more money on school stuff than you do on your own children."- Jeff Foxworthy

"Good schools, like good societies and good families, celebrate and cherish diversity."- Deborah Meier

"Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave." - Henry Brougham

"Education is a painful, continual & difficult work to be done in
kindness, by watching, by warning: by praise & by example."- John
Ruskin

"No matter how good teaching may be, each student must take the responsibility for his own education."- John Carolus

"A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool."-William Shakespeare

"Be a wonderful role model because you will be the window through which many children will see their future."- Thomas Mckinnon

"A child's creativity is only limited by their parents' willingness to clean up after them."- Robert John Meehan

"All learning begins when our comfortable ideas turn out to be inadequate."- John Dewey

"In schools a main problem is not the absence of innovations but the
presence of too many disconnected, piecemeal projects."- Michael Fullan

"Cutting the deficit by gutting education is like lightening an
overloaded airplane by removing its engine."- US President Barack Obama"Teaching, is not just a job. It is a human service, and it must be thought of as a mission."- Dr. Ralph Tyler

"EDUCATION: I can only say that I view it as the most important subject
which we as a people may be engaged in." - Abraham Lincoln

"The aim of education is the knowledge not of fact, but of values."- William Ralph Inge

"Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds."- Plato

"An education isn't how much you have memorized, It's being able to
differentiate between what you do know and what you don't."- Anatole
France

"What keeps teachers going has largely to do with their inner lives. It is the inner spirit that makes and sustains good teachers."- Robert John Meehan

"WHEN we don’t get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don’t blame the soldiers."- Dave Eggers”

"Theories and goals of education don't mean a whit if you don't consider your students to be human beings."-Lou Ann Walker"We can wherever we choose, successfully teach all children... we
already know more than we need to know in order to do that." Ron Edmonds

"Schooling, instead of encouraging the asking of questions, too often discourages it."- Madeleine L'Engle"Grouping kids by age for instruction makes about as much pedagogical sense as grouping them by height."- Deborah Ruf"Anyone who does anything to help a child in his life is a hero to me". - Fred Rogers

"Nothing that the political ed reformist mandate can match the results of
a dedicated teacher in a "supportive" school environment."- Robert John Meehan"What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done
for others and the world remains and is immortal." - Albert Pike

"The most influential of all educational factors is the conversation in a child's home."- William Temple Sr"Education is what most receive, many pass on, and few possess."- Karl Kraus

Robert John Meehan's
insight into the heart and souls of both teacher and student has earned him
recognition as 'The Voice Of the American Teacher'. Selections from The Teacher's Journey/The Road Less Traveled have appeared in numerous magazines and educational
journals. Robert
John Meehan is now one of the nation's most read public school allies. Much has been said about the difficulties involved teaching in
the inner-city schools, but little has been done to share the emotions
of both teacher and student as Robert John Meehan has. He has done much
in the area of encouraging others to share their feelings about what can
and should be done in today's classrooms. His career expanded over four
decades of teaching in the urban classroom. Robert John Meehan's gift of bringing the focus of
the general public to a deeper understanding of both the rigors and
compassion found in today's classroom is unmatched among others in his
profession.Robert John Meehan's The Teacher's Journey/The Road Less Traveled is
available at most major bookstores or online book sellers. It has earned him
much acclaim and popularity among educators and parents alike..Click here to order.

What people are saying ...

I
stumbled upon the author on twitter and the name of his book struck a
cord, both parts of the title have deep meaning for me. I'm a teacher
that recently left a decade long career in an inner city
school and I'm launching a site to help teachers find their next step
along their journey from the classroom. I also many years ago read the
book A Road Less Traveled by M Scott Peck and that changed my life at 20
and inspired me to push through tragedy to accomplish my goal of
becoming a teacher. Naturally I was curious so a couple of clicks later
I was reading the poetic insights of a fellow teacher that had been
genuinely connected to the students he encountered on his own teacher's
journey. I not only related to the words so thoughtfully put together
but also could not help but feel as if he was in some way describing the
many children that were once in my own classroom. I think any teacher
that has spent time in school where survival is part of the everyday
norm, will enjoy this poignant and creatively written book, that Meehan
has wistfully bared his raw emotions through poetry. I recommend it
highly and for a mere $6.99, you can download it instantly and be as
inspired and grateful as I am by another Teacher's Journey.